(Celebrating Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013. Reprinted from Sunday Times, 20 May 1990)
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Last Sunday I was at the stadium to welcome Nelson and Winnie Mandela, the world’s best known freedom fighters; and with me was my good friend Burning-Bright, BB, who I’m quite sure you don’t remember (it’s been an age). Well, he is the ex-Catholic priest turned pan-African nationalist who is a non-believer in half measures, sweet-reasonableness or compromise. With him it’s all or nothing. The scorched earth is his formidable symbol. “Drive the bloody Boers into the sea,” he yells whenever the matter of South Africa comes up. And that’s his final solution.
“Yeah,” he sneered as we waited for this amazing couple to arrive. “So, Mandela is free. But he won’t last.”
“What?” I fairly screamed. “What do you mean by that?”
“Mandela and his ANC want a multi-racial South Africa.”
“Non-racial,” I corrected.
“Same ten and ten pence. But they should never be allowed to have that.”
“You mean the racists should stick to their guns?”
“One man one goal,” he said with a mischievous smile.
“You think South Africa is your Nigeria? Football is not their national obsession.”
He pointed at the goal posts. “We’re in the National Stadium, aren’t we?”
“The racists already accept one man one vote,” I said.
“Yes, but with a lot of ands, ifs and buts.”
“The goal is majority rule, isn’t it?”
“A black South Africa is the goal,” he said with finality.
I chewed this for a while. “So what’s to become of the whites?” I asked.
“Let them go back to the Netherlands where they came from. KLM still flies, doesn’t it?”
The loudspeakers were getting agitated. The most celebrated couple of the decade were soon to appear. Burning-Bright went on with his odd-ball notions.
“You see, it’s like this,” he said. “These whites think they’re in South Africa to stay. . . .”
“Verwoerd said Over my dead body,” I interrupted.
“Vorster said Not in my lifetime,” he chimed in.
“And they were right, weren’t they?”
“When the Arabs invaded Spain and settled there, they said the same.”
“And they were right—for seven centuries!”
“Yes. For seven centuries they made it stick.”
“Then came the day of reckoning . . .”
“And the Spaniards-in-arms drove the stinking Arabs into the sea. It’s all down there in the history books . . . .”
At that point the entire stadium came down in a tumultuous and prolonged ovation. The Tall Comrade had arrived, his Comely Consort at his side. Freedom Fighter Numbers 1 and 2 in all the world! They are the Lords of Azania! This land is ours. Papa’s Land! Seek ye first the political kingdom! The Clenched Fist! And they circled the arena in their chariot of light, their juggernaut of triumph. Mandela! Black Power! Mandela! Mandela! Free Mandela! Free Mandela! Mandela is free! Amandla! Mandela is free! O God bless our native Africa . . . ! Arise Oh compatriots . . . Freedom, Peace and Unity!!
The crowed settled. The ceremonies began. Speeches. Speeches. Speeches. Song and dance. Song and dance. Need I make a Roll Call? Nigerian musicians of that Day, you know yourselves: Stand and take a bow! Yes sir! See you in the kingdom! But Oh come on, let’s have some fun. I saw that brother hug Onyeka Onwenu tightly, hungrily! Uuuu-weee! Gorgeous woman. Can’t really say I blame him. And his wife smiled—she has a lot to smile about, that’s for sure—after 27 years. Burning-Bright simply lost his head and started ranting:
“The brother didn’t touch a woman for 27 years. 27 godforsaken years, man! Can you dig it?”
BB had slipped into Americanese—as he sometime did whenever he got the spirit, when the excitement reaches deep and grazes his bone marrows and he loses control. He’s swimming in the void now. Totally spaced out.
“The man should have ten wives and twenty girlfriends!” he screamed. “Fragrant! Succulent! Delicious! Psychdelic! O my God! A zoomanoid of feline femininity! Tall, short, fat, thin, buxom, flat, black, white! Let the brother taste them all! Every country he visits should bestow upon him a beautiful woman, a winsome Winnie! Yes. It’s in the African tradition! The man needs a (four-letter unprintable) jamboree! Body no be wood, after all! Nwokem, madu ga emeghari aru! Kai! Do you know what it means to be without a woman for 27 years? Greater love hath no man than this, that he gave 27 years of his (four-letter unprintable) life for his country! . . . .”
BB’s strident baritone was mercifully drowned in the wild cheering of the vast sing-along crowd, thereby saving him from deserved censure for his irreverent not to speak of unclean thoughts. (You will applaud me, won’t you, dear reader, for not daring the nation’s leading Sunday paper to reproduce the stained vocabulary of this wild man!)
Meanwhile, on the podium, Mandela was speaking of peace.
“Isn’t he just ripe for the Nobel Peace Prize?” I said. “Just wait three years. You’ll see. Those Swedes can spot a winner from ten miles off. They just love South Africa!”
“The Swedes are idiots, their grandparents were idiots before them. South Africans have nothing to be peaceful about!” BB was quite fired up. At least he was back down on earth. “I hope to God the PAC stays awake to its responsibilities. Then we shall see war!”
Now I was getting angry myself. “It’s easy to talk of war as long as it’s in someone else’s land.”
“Rubbish!” replied BB. “I saw war! What are you talking about? I saw hell right here at home! You fight for principles. Live or die, na de same ten and ten pence.”
“But come on, BB, Rome wasn’t built in a day. And don’t you think Mandela knows it? Even in freedom there are degrees.” I flipped the pages of the magazine on my lap. “And I quote: Dearly beloved, herein set forth is the wheel of your progress from hell on earth to paradise on earth and back again. First, the bourgeois nationalist revolution. Then socialism if you can manage it. Then finally, after numerous trials and backslidings, the celestial state of communism. There shall be no short-cuts, by-passes or frog-jumps. You can’t have it all in two weeks. It takes three. Amen. Epistle of St. Marx to the Dieticians, Chapter 5 Verses 7 to 11. And so it is.”
Burning-Bright shrugged. “You know what you are, O.J.? A thorough neanderthal.”
“Thanks for the compliment. At any rate, Mandela is free. We are right to celebrate. And what’s more, now the Pope can go to South Africa, since he vowed never to go there until Mandela is free.”
